If you ask me what I do for a living, I’ll be quick to say that I’m a conference producer, because that’s how I primarily make money. I am, first and foremost, an entrepreneur, a business owner, who happens to have a couple of projects on the side I do for other companies. But if you asked me seven years ago, when I switched from being an employee to being a (sort of) freelancer, my portfolio career looked very different:
program director/magazine editor/freelance writer/
I did not have my own business then. I had a monthly retainer for two companies and was earning freelance writing fees for a number of print and online publishers. And my income was more or less equally distributed among those three roles. I was in my early 30s then and was just transitioning from working full-time to working freelance.
If you asked me back then what I did for a living, I would get stumped for a minute. I’m not exactly a freelancer because I had two regular gigs that I worked on regularly and got paid for monthly. So I was like a part-time consultant with a monthly retainer. One of those projects paid me a share in the profits of a conference I conceptualized and was helping to run. So in that sense I was like a business owner except I’m not a stockholder of that company.
There are other slashers like me who may also have the same predicament — it’s hard to define exactly what they do. But just to make sure you don’t get the wrong idea about slashers, this is what they are not:
- It’s not someone who moonlights. A slasher is not someone who desperately needs the money and has to moonlight or work another job at night.
- It’s not someone doing odd jobs. A slasher is not one who takes on whatever comes his way for a few months until someone hires him full-time.
- It’s not someone who sells stuff in the office for a few bucks. A slasher is not someone who harasses her co-workers to buy clothes and bags she bought from her Hong Kong trip.
- It’s not someone who sometimes sells stuff on eBay or Multiply. A slasher is not one who auctions off old toys online or selling her custom-made trinkets when she happen to find extra time.
- It’s not an occasional networker. A slasher is not someone who joins a direct selling firm to sell on the side.
- It’s not a hobbyist. A slasher is not someone who does something just for fun with no or little monetary compensation.
- It’s not a volunteer. A slasher is not somebody working for a foundation, church, or non-profit without monetary compensation.
- It’s not a freelancer. A slasher is not an independent contractor doing only one thing for different companies.
- It’s not being self-employed. A slasher is not a sole proprietor or solo entrepreneur running one kind of business.
- It’s not being underemployed. A slasher is not a temp who takes on part-time work because he has no choice.
Now that you know what being a slasher is not, you want to know what exactly it is.
Photo by Hannah Wei on Unsplash
